The City and Borough of Juneau is once again running their junk car roundup, it's a chance for you to get rid of any old vehicles that don't run anymore and best of all It's free, and there's only a few requirements. We spoke with Jim Penor, the Solid Waste Coordinator for the City, to find out what they were.

"For the junk vehicle roundup, the requirements are that it's registered under a private citizen's name, no commercial vehicles, they can bring the cars in themselves or they can also call a local towing company, and local towing companies also have the required form that needs to be filled out. When a vehicle arrives and gets brought in it can't be full of garbage, it can still have the 4 tires on it and the spare, all the fluids can be still in the vehicle; our contractor will remove all the fluids."

The program is free to the general public, but there's still a cost to dispose of them, so you may ask "who pays for it all?" And the short answer is; everybody who owns a car helps pay for the program.
Rod Swope, the City Manager, explained the funding mechanism that is used to pay for the roundup.

"We've got about 28,000 vehicles currently registered in the City and Borough of Juneau, so when you go down to Motor Vehicles at the State to register your vehicle we had worked with them to add an additional eleven dollars per year that would then come back to the City, remitted back to the City, and that's what we use to fund our junk vehicle program."

The city holds two events every year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and they hope to run this one until the middle of June. They accept cars Monday thru Saturday from 8 to 5 on Anka Street near Costco. Jim Penor stated the City's goal for the program.

"What our goal is as a city is to get all these vehicles that are inoperative for the highway, and get them collected up and taken care of in an environmental safe way."

And City Manager Rod Swope thinks its working.

"I think it has served its purpose, just driving around town I can tell there are a lot fewer eyesores and Junkers parked around and sitting alongside the road than there used to be."